The section's complex final sentence has been read in various contradictory ways. He is filled with boredom and simmering rage, combined with a dizzying sense of claustrophobia and inferno ("At a vast distance above my underground salon, houses take root, mists assemble"). The poem's speaker is living in a rented tomb "very far below the earth". The fifth and final section of "Childhood" again relishes strange gothic perspectives. Here he addresses the startling possibilities of Rimbaud's metaphor and gives it flight. The French word "lessive", which Ashbery delivers wonderfully as "laundry", is frequently expressed in English versions by the relatively low-key "wash". I gaze for a long time at the melancholy gold laundry of the setting sun." In that last extended phrase we have one of the highlights of the book. I am the walker on the great highway. I am the learned scholar in the dark armchair. We are presented with several versions of a constantly transforming self: "I am the saint, at prayer on the terrace. Section 4 delivers a remarkable form of listing. – You follow the red highway to arrive at the empty inn." There's a nice touch here Ashbery carries the bee metaphor, used to describe the leaves, just a little farther than the original the word "l'essaim" meaning "the swarm" is precisely rendered, but he then translates "entoure" not as "surrounds" or "gathers around" but as "buzzes around". The old people buried standing up in the rampart overgrown with wallflowers." This mixture of the magical and macabre extends to an abandoned rural community: "The swarm of golden leaves buzzes around the general's house. – The dead young mother descends the front steps. Its second section describes a mysterious château and its inhabitants, presented with dark, gothic detail: "That's her, the dead little girl, behind the rosebushes. One of the most successful pieces is "Childhood".
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